Finale- looking for opinions.

I have been using various versions of Finale since 1999. As my first notation software it was wonderful because it allowed me to stuff I'd never done before (like hear my compositions immediately, write and hear piano music I couldn't physically play, print fancy-looking sheet music). Of course there were also frustrating times particularly when I hit up against its limitations or bugs. Lyrics particularly were quite buggy back then (and still have some problems today).

The latest versions have come a long way. Probably the best thing about the recent versions of Finale is the quality of playback. Probably the worst thing about Finale is the file format it saves to. I still have scores that I edit using the software I bought in 1999 because opening the scores in a newer versions messes up the layout. Worse still, scores edited in newer versions cannot be opened at all by older versions of Finale. For example, I have Finale 2007 on my computer but if a friend sends me a file that was created in Finale 2008 or later then I am unable to open the file to view or edit it. I guess they want you to pay the yearly upgrade fee (usually around $140) and keep up with the latest versions. Because of these problems I have started avoiding using Finale whenever I can. Of course there are still some jobs that I can only do in Finale and at least for the near future Finale and Sibelius will continue to dominate the major publishing houses. They are both more mature, better funded, and have a head start.

I have been looking for a suitable open source scorewriter for many years and was very excited when I found MuseScore. It was quite limited when I first downloaded version 0.9.2 but those limitations are steadily being knocked away. Version 0.9.5 is probably the first version that is stable enough for normal use.

The current work on non-lossy transposition, improvements to part extraction, and a default SoundFont that includes all the instrument sounds, should make the upcoming 0.9.6 release much more suitable for ensemble and orchestral writing . I expect that MuseScore has a bright future ahead of it and it is exciting for me to be a part of it.

I say these things not to discourage you from purchasing professional software but to encourage you to report ways that MuseScore is not meeting your needs and to mention that Finale isn't without its own set of problems.

I would like to echo some of David's comments, as well as add some of my own. I am a middle school & high school band director, and I have been a Finale user since 2001. I purchased the upgrades in 2004, 2006, and 2009, but I became frustrated with the lack of new features and bugs that continued to be there version after version. I didn't feel the upgrade price was worth the small changes every year, and even after purchasing 2009, I discovered that it's not that much different for what I use it for from the 2001 version. That's when I began searching out alternatives and came across MuseScore. I would agree with David that 0.9.5 is the first truly usable version, as 0.9.4 (the first version I tested) had too many problems to be of use every day. With 0.9.5 the program has finally matured to the point of me being able to completely abandon Finale. I still open it to export some of my older scores to MusicXML so I can import them into MuseScore, but that's it. I don't write professional scores, but for my use, MuseScore more than gets the job done, and the improvements in 0.9.6 look great. I wrote every one of my football season arrangements on MuseScore this year, and I've started writing a new concert piece complete with percussion and a jazz band arrangement. I just did my first vocal arrangement yesterday for the chorus teacher who had the score but wanted individual parts to a piece. I was able to put in the entire 4 part piece, make it look exactly like it did on the printed page, and make single voice parts complete with lyrics (some lyrics were 2 lines). Sure, MuseScore is not without it's quirks/bugs, but so is Finale, and they want $$$ after $$$ after $$$! I've found that I can enter notation and create parts much quicker with MuseScore, and I always felt as if I was *fighting* with Finale to make it do what I wanted. Sometimes I have to work around MuseScore to make it do what I want, but I almost always achieve my goal, and I can't argue with the price.

The end came for me with Finale when they discontinued their free Finale Notepad, as I would direct my students to it so they could do basic arranging/composing and sometimes play with the scores that I gave them. Now they want to charge for Notepad, which is so limited as to not really be usable for anything but a *very* basic part, and my students don't have a free alternative to compose/arrange with. Now that I'm with MuseScore, the students can have the same full version program that I have to work with, and can open/edit the scores or parts I give them.

You may still want to purchase Finale, especially while you can get it with the discount (the full price is ridiculous in my opinion), but you may also ask yourself what you're going to do with it. If you feel you truly must have it for your needs, buy it, but given enough experience with MuseScore, you may want to save your money.